Abu Qatada smuggling statements out of prison

Extremist preacher Abu Qatada has been smuggling statements out of prison claiming victory over the British government and calling on his followers to support a holy war.

Abu Qatada Photo: REUTERS

By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent

3:52PM BST 05 Apr 2009

Shahid Malik, the Justice Minister, was criticised yesterday after he claimed there was no security breach at Long Lartin jail where Qatada is held, despite the appearance of three statements on radical websites associated with friends of the preacher.

Qatada, described as "Osama bin Laden's ambassador in Europe," boasted on the at-Tibyan website last month: "We have defeated the British government by the virtue of Allah the Most High, and in our imprisonment, there was an uncovering of their filthiness and their criminality and their false claims of humanism."

Talking of British Muslims from Pakistan, he added: "A new generation of the Muslim youth has been raised, and especially amongst our brothers who originate from the

Indian subcontinent, who were no longer mesmerized by the English authority, nor regarding the English values – rather they hate it and they know its enmity towards them, so they have become enemies towards it as well."

Qatada also wrote of meeting Bilal Abdulla, the Iraqi doctor jailed for life for the London and Glasgow car bombings, in prison and said he was "truthfully a man from the men of Islam, in knowledge, action, steadfastness and manhood."

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Another statement in January praised "martyrs" in Gaza and added "make us follow them," while a third in June last year appears to be an interview conducted by fellow prisoner Adel Abdel Bary in which Qatada defends "our brothers in al-Qaeda."

Mr Malik called the reports "alarmist" and said the "research seems pretty lame at best" but the Quilliam Foundation, a think-tank which publicised the leaks, pointed to a report on the prison last year that said their censors worked under "patently inadequate conditions" and staff in the segregation unit where Qatada is held had received no training in the detention histories of the prisoners and did not speak Arabic.

James Brandon, a senior research fellow at Quilliam, said: "The evidence that these statements were written by Abu Qatada from within prison is absolutely overwhelming. It is terrifying that the Prison Service has allowed Abu Qatada to repeatedly distribute pro-jihadist texts from within British prisons."

Qatada has been described by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission as a "truly dangerous individual" who was "heavily involved, indeed at the centre of terrorist activities associated with al-Qaeda."

He was re-arrested over fears that he might flee the country after being freed on bail last year and is currently fighting deportation to Jordan for terrorism charges.